Introductions
by Rodlox
Summary: SG1 SG:Atlantis crossover for the rarepairings 2006 ficathon. AU. Teal'c meets Teyla in a reality where the Tauri luck hasn't been so hot.


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**Title:Introductions.**

**Author:Keenir**

**Thanks to my beta-reader, Fififolle.**

**Written for Shushu,** who asked for Teyla/Teal'c friendship, with subthemes including traveling, and avoiding stereotypes for both characters. I'd wanted to write a fic where Teal'c is unconscious, and Teyla has to drag him across an open desert…but my muses wouldn't let that get beyond outine

Summary:In a timeline where a critical victory never happened, Teal'c and the Tauri meet Teyla and the Athosians. What will become of them?

Author's note: In **_The Rising_**, Sheppard had it lucky: he was introduced by Athosians to Athosians. Teal'c's merry little band isn't so lucky.

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2003 AD

ATLANTIS:

We are all that remains of our cause. All others have defected or died. At most, we do not number a full hundred.

Perhaps that is why we were spared. Anubis knows – as would any child (for that matter) – that such a small number cannot help but be assimilated into any population. Without a sarcophagus, none of us can pose a threat to him for more than a century. We are ephemeral, now more than ever, a fly permitted to buzz.

Ryac is dead. As are O'Neill, Jonas Quinn, and Hammond. Anubis vanquished them all. With his victory, the halfway-ascended Goa'uldhas taken the stargates from Earth, as well as the Facility of the Ancients from the Antarctic.

In what may be generosity or patient tactics, Anubis has permitted us to come here: we stand now within Atlantis itself, about to be banished to yet another world. I look away from my fellow refugees and look up the long flight of stairs, at Anubis standing there in his resplendent robes, his face nothing but a blackness, faint midnight clouds sculling across it. He reaches forth his hand, and the stargate activates. "Go now," Anubis commands.

We are surrounded by Kull warriors. It has never been otherwise since our forced surrender.

Bauer – once General Bauer – shouts for everyone to fall in and follow him. Since the Battle of the Antarctic, he has proven to be a finer warrior than I had suspected those years ago when we had first encountered one another. Bauer is first through the event horizon, followed by Harry Maybourne, Samantha Carter, Doctor McKay, and then everyone else.

I am the last to pass through, ensuring that none of our people are captured or held up.

I am Teal'c. And I have survived. (Thus far.)

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I step through to a world – a planet new to all of us - blanketed by the light of an intensely bright dawn, its sun rising behind me. Bauer, Carter and the other former officers have spread out upon arriving, establishing a perimeter and our safety.

With four people remaining behind at the DHD – Maybourne, Raknor, a host by the name of Vala Mal Doran, and a Marine by the name of Laura Cadman – the remainder of us set out to inspect the world Anubis has banished us to. Was his choice random or deliberate?

For half an hour we walk, and abruptly we are surrounded. Not by armed men, but surrounded nonetheless. By this time, I am in the front of the group. "Holding their guns in reserve?" Bauer asks, suspecting that.

I nod. "It is most possible."

A woman steps between two men of the circle around us. She is shorter and duskier than the majority of the circle. "You are trespassing," she informs us.

"Where exactly are we trespassing?" Bauer asks her. "And whose land is it?"

"I am Teyla Emmagan, of the Athosian people."

"What's this place called?" Kate Heightmeyer asks, her symbiote silent.

"We are Athosians."

"'Atho,' then?" Doctor McKay asks.

"Athos," she corrects, patient as any teacher – like Bra'tac when I was first learning. "All the worlds which are unclaimed by others, are Athos."

"So," Kate Heightmeyer says, a touch of her symbiote in her voice, "you are the people who live in the empty places?" a touch of amusement in her question.

"We are."

I nod to her. Every people adapts to their world in their own way – the Byrsa people adopted the practice of Cor'ai and running away, whereas other people, just as human as the Byrsa, took up radically different lifestyles. "We are the Tauri." That is our common denominator, the point which all of our alliances and allegiances pivot upon.

"I see. Does your band represent your people?"

"We are all that remains of our people," I inform her.

Teyla Emmagan simply looks at me, examining me, with the occasional glance at those with me. After a time, "What do you wish?"

"We wish to live amongst you, for a time at least."

"We can be allies," Carter says, with the same impetuousness which she and Daniel Jackson used to demonstrate on so many worlds before Antarctica.

"That remains to be seen," Teyla Emmagan tells me.

"Do you need to inform your superiors, or consult your religious figures?" I ask, understanding why patience is always needed.

An upwards quirk of her lip. "I am both."

"Then what's the holdup?" Doctor McKay asks. "Yes or no."

Sounding more amused than offended, "I can see no reason why I must rush this decision. Are you amenable to a traditional means of settlement?"

I nod. "I am agreeable to that." When she nods in kind, "Is there a preferred time or location for this?"

"No. It is done wherever it is needed," and draws a pair of short staffs from a beltpouch, and holds a hand out to her people, palm facing the sky. She hands me her staffs as a tall man hands her his.

I accept hers with a nod. _ A fight to decide. Not unprecedented, even in my own galaxy_.

"We circle one another," Teyla Emmagan explained. "Only the two of us. An attack may only occur during verse formation."

"'Verse formation'?" I hear several people repeat behind me, their voices whispers.

"That is acceptable," I reply to her.

"Teal'c," Bauer says, "a word?"

"I will be only a moment," I say, and Teyla Emmagan nods her head sufficient for a dismissal. I step back and join Bauer, Carter, and a few others.

"You sure about this?" asks one man whom I have had unfortunately already met in battle. I do not answer him, as his question does not merit an answer. "You're going to fight her and spout poetry…and this is supposed to get them on our side?"

_Verse_, I silently correct. _Poetry, not prose._

"Teal'c," Carter says, "you've met Lt. Colonel Sheppard, haven't you?"

Not deigning to make eye contact with him, I say, "We are…aquainted." Bauer nods.

"Yeah," Sheppard says, sounding no happier than either of us.

Forging onwards, Carter says, "From what we've been able to learn thus far, the valley has a place called the 'City of the Ancestors.' I think it may hold Ancient weapons, or, at the very least, it'll have computers we can use."

_We have perhaps three working computers among our entire population, and still you speak as if we had access to the full resources of the SGC._ I say none of that, as it may well be her coping mechanism, and each of us is entitled to a measure of self-delusion…provided it does not inhibit us in times of need. "What do that Athosians say of it?" I ask.

"They – they say it's…haunted."

"Suggesting traps." _None of us are like O'Neill, able to trigger Ancient technologies and safeties; still, that is no reason not to be cautious._

"I'm sure we can avoid them." I do not reply to that, and she nods. "Just thinkin'."

I nod.

"Look," Sheppard says, "I don't know about you, but I sure as hell signed up to kick Anubis' butt. You might be okay fighting like you're half-awake, but I intend to check out everything that has even half a chance of winning this for us!"

_That is what killed Daniel Jackson: you and that attitude._ I say nothing to him. Bra'tac taught me well, that inferior arguments should not be responded to with words, but only stony stares and silence. After a minute, Sheppard grumbles and stomps away. I turn again back to Teyla Emmagan, whose face shows she is always paying attention to everything, a quality befitting a fine leader.

She says nothing. She simply waits for me to begin walking, to initiate the mutual circling. No doubt they have a word for this in their language; I will learn it at a later time.

I circle her and she circles me. Silence for a time. Then Teyla Emmagan spoke first,

"_**Whereupon indeed,**_

"**_If you lose, then leave,_**

"**_taking your people along,"_ **lunge and strike, I parry her staff away. More worrying is hearing Carter's voice calling out for Sheppard, trying to see where he has gone to. _Damn him_ O'Neill would have said, _damn him indeed._

"_**Whereupon indeed,**_

"_**If you defeat me,**_

"**_we welcome you, Athosian."_**

She now stands ready, circling me as I circle her, staffs low but ready at a moment's notice. I take my time in composing my response, and once I am ready, I reply in kind, having picked up the patterns in what she said.

"_**I understand. Yes,**_

"_**Your terms bear the weight**_

"**_of a long and honored way," _**move to one side too abruptly to be anything but an attack, but I do not attack. I have gotten her to flinch, to react. Does this qualify as a success with these people? In some lands, it would; here, I do not know.

"_**I understand, yes.**_

"_**Though am curious:**_

"_**Should we tie or tire. Then…?"**_

Her lip quirks in amusement.

"_**Understand me now.**_

"_**There is no tie, no**_

"**_way to end it thusly," _**and did not strike, did not turn or move abruptly. Skipping a turn? Or simply opting to wait.

Several minutes - 'long minutes' in Tauri parlance - pass before Teyla Emmagan continues.

"_**Understand me, now**_

"_**And always, there is**_

"_**victory, one alone."**_

My reply is no more hurried than any of hers had been.

"_**Curious. I am**_

"_**Wondering how this**_

"**_has shaped you," _**and with that, I step for her, my arms moving in strikes honed to take down even the best-trained First Prime -- and she dodges them all, spinning and whirling, arms and legs and sticks honed weapons I dodge by narrow margins. Even dressed as she is in furs, she moves faster than most Jaffa would were they similarly swaddled. Most impressive.

"_**Curious I am**_

"_**To know if there are**_

"_**exceptions to the rules."**_

Teyla Emmagan tells me,

"_**Assuredly so.**_

"_**Exceptions exist.**_

"**_so too do we abide," _**and takes a single whack at my left staff, more of a token pat than a lash in anger.

"_**Assuredly so.**_

"_**So too we abide**_

"**_by outcomes --" _**and she freezes in place, her face facing me, but her eyes focused up on the sky. Then, abruptly, she cocks her head and stops where she stands. Behind her, every Athosian has gone silent. Soft and quiet as she says it, I hear Teyla's word with crystal clarity: "Wraith." She charges at me, and dodges at the last minute, "Come!" she instructs me.

Just before and while we can hear a sharp sound zipping overhead and nearby, both of our peoples flee as one, seeking common shelter.

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**The End**

Author's notes: the poems follow this pattern:

_**5 / 5 / 6**_


End file.
